She wasn't meant to be in the plan
by Jed52
Summary: Stuck with Elizabeth Bennet in a chocolate shop, Darcy comes across a startling confession from her. It's already bad enough that he's falling for her. Darcy POV. *Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen's creation*


**A/N: This oneshot has been lying in my head for some time now. It starts off with the basic idea of them trapped somewhere but I wanted to do more with Darcy. His perspective can be pushed further and I decided to focus on that. I've used a different writing style, I'm not too sure with it and I would love to hear what everyone thinks of it. **

**As for 'A Little Love Spell', I haven't let it down and I'm still working on the next chapter :) But I really wanted to get this idea on paper. Sorry for the previous mistakes- I was posting this half asleep :P I've edited it now and added a part at the start which was clearly missing and explains how everything started. **

"Do you think white chocolate is better or dark chocolate?" I heard Charlie ask Jane before they flashed each other grins.

I rolled my eyes; these two and their lovey-dovey moments- they could at least spare us in a chocolate shop.

I continued following Jane and Charlie while they looked at everything. For myself, I was more concerned with wandering around than to care what they were doing. Elizabeth was walking in front of me and I couldn't stop my attention from drifting to her. She was humming slowly as she eyed the chocolate boxes before walking on again with me trailing behind her. I must have been really lost in my thoughts not to realise that Charlie and Jane had broken off from the group to probably pay for the chocolate they finally decided on. If I pressed my mind further, I could have sworn to have heard Charlie telling me that Jane and him were going to head off for other shops and meet us later at home. We were already past five and all shops were closing down and they had better hurry up. I vaguely muttered a goodbye before continuing wandering with Elizabeth in the huge shop. It was a while before she finally turned around to face me.

"So, how come you're still here? I thought you would be off with Jane and Charlie?" She asked.

"I would rather not be with the couple," I said and she seemed to agree with me with a smile.

"I get that. I just didn't think you would like to be here."

"Why's that?" I was curious now.

"You just don't seem the type to wander in chocolate shops when you could be in your office," she said casually.

Okay, so on that I have to agree. I can't admit that I came when her name was mentioned as part of the party. Still, Elizabeth has a knack for frankly saying things that should be left unsaid.

"Hey, I'm not the boring person with no life that you keep picturing me as," I retorted.

She replied with a smile dancing at her lips.

"I can be fun! It's not because I don't stay up at late night parties that I'm not fun," I said annoyed to her complete lack of faith in my social skills.

"I didn't mean that. I meant that you don't like to lose your time-"

"So now I'm selfish!" I cried out.

"What? Now when did I say that?" She said, her temper rising.

_"You don't like to lose your time," _I said mimicking her and adding exaggerated sarcasm. In the background, I heard a faint metal screeching but disregarded it.

"OK, for one, I don't talk like that! For two, my point is that you never waste your time. Take now for example. You came with us for shopping but you didn't buy anything. You came with three people yet you barely talk to anyone. But you get talkative when you get a call from work. See?"

I threw my hands in air, "It's pointless arguing with you!" It's not true that I don't talk. I just don't know what to say. Some people are like that.

"You-" She stopped talking and looked up to me and I knew why.

A loud racket filled the shop and ended with a powerful thump. We stared at each other, eyes wide open before running to the entrance. The doors of the shop were tightly closed and locked and we were trapped inside.

*******

Oh shit! Stuck with Elizabeth Bennet in a chocolate shop. All alone.

"Shit, shit shit!" I was stupidly trying to open the doors.

"Darcy, these doors are made of _steel_," she emphasised to me but I looked annoyed, "So unless you've been recently thrown in a bucket of radioactive spiders, I don't think you'll manage to tear them apart."

I give up and she puts her hands on her hips in amusement, "So what do you propose, Captain Broody?"

"Do you have a phone?" I asked.

"I don't have one, Darcy," she retorted.

"What?" I said exasperated. The girl's even more hopeless than I thought. "In which world do you _live_?" I flipped mine open to realise _again_ that I had no network at all. That means we'll have to stay the whole night together. Come on, Fitzwilliam, you can control your hormones! You can survive this! Be a man! Well, that's the problem: I _am_ a man.

Arg! I shook my head and rattled the thoughts in them.

Oh no, she's glancing at me with those lovely-uhmm-I mean tolerable(albeit seductive) eyes! They remain on me for a second and I stare back at them. I can't help myself from noticing the tiny specks of grey in her green eyes or how her lower lip is of a darker shade of pink. I look up and realise that she has a quizzical disbelief on her face. I also realise that I've been staring at her with my mouth open. Snapping my mouth shut and unwillingly patting my face to check for drool, I inwardly curse myself. Great. Now she must be thinking I'm some kind of creepy, drooling stalker.

What the hell is happening to me!

I can't... no... I can't be...

I refuse to admit it. I cannot.. possibly... be attracted... to Elizabeth Bennet.

It's the worst possible scenario:

I, Fitzwilliam Darcy, want to snog Elizabeth Bennet senseless.

It even beats the one where Caroline asks me to marry her and I flee to the Himalayas, hide in a bunker and finish as an hermit.

I'm in deep shit now. I know it because the day I start to think of sending everyone to hell and kiss Elizabeth Bennet in front of everone means _very bad_ trouble.

It's been pretty much this way ever since I've met her. I remember the day as well as I see the vibrant colours today. Charlie and Jane had dragged me to dinner with them in a sports bar. I don't understand why they bother taking me out with them when all they clearly want is a quiet corner. I sometimes think it's Charlie's conscience biting him for having left me with Caroline alone when he was out with Jane. But anyway, while Charlie was showering all his puppy love on Jane, I was busy shouting with everyone else as my favourite football club was getting smacked down three goals to one.

"Come _on_! He's there! On your left! Pass the bloody ball!" I shouted to the TV together with a swamp of other voices. "Do you have two left feet or what?!" I shouted again when the ball was lost to the opponent. "Thirty minutes left. You can do it guys!!"

"That's not going to happen, I'm afraid," said a soft voice strangely close to me.

I whipped my head around to notice a petite child-woman sitting right next to Jane and grinning what could be easily described as ear to ear. She had long auburn hair with bangs sweeping across her pixie-like face. "You'll need four goals to beat my team. Your striker's alone in front. Your other players are too busy defending and as far as I know he can't strike when he has _no_ ball." She untwirled her shawl from her neck as she smirked.

"And you are?" I snapped. Hey, don't blame _me_. Blame it on football(and that stupid striker for that matter) I stared at her hard and automatically took what my cousin Richard calls my 'stuck-up-prick' look.

Instead she smiled and extended her hand, "Elizabeth Bennet. Jane's sister." She grinned at Jane and Charlie who seemed to know that she was expected.

"William Darcy," I said flatly when I shook her hand, "And he's going to get the ball if your defender stops tackling him." I finished grimly.

"Sure," she replied nonchalently and engaged into a conversation with Jane.

"Sure?"I exclaimed, "What does that mean?" I interrupted her 'deep' conversation on Buffy the Vampire Slayer with Jane. My eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits.

She smiled, "It means that as soon as you said that our defender was tackling him, whatever I would say next would be taken as blasphemy."

"You mean I won't believe you?! I can be totally objective."

I noticed that Jane and Charlie had stopped cooing in their corner and were tuning in to our 'discussion'.

Elizabeth tapped her fingers to her jaw absent-mindedly and said: "OK...So your striker looks like he's going to get knocked out with the slightest blow of wind. Now that's why he can't score."

"He's just fine!" I retorted immediately even if I knew that she might be the teensiest right and turned to watch the match again.

"Ha! See! You don't even believe what you're saying but you'll still say it because you don't want to accept that we're the better team today." She poked her finger at me in victory and Charlie joined in her celebration. I shot him a glare screaming traitor.

"Are you always this irritating?" I asked exasperated.

"Are you always playing the tortured soul?" she replied.

And that was it. Bang! Kaboom! Elizabeth Bennet had outwitted me. The rest of the dinner and our encounters went in fighting and her laughter as she argued with me on everything. I wonder if this woman even knew who I was but I guess it wouldn't have stopped her from stubbornly standing up to me. No one had ever talked to me like that: she challenged me, treated me as an equal and told me squarely if I was acting like an idiot. Initially it was irritating and bewildering. If someone else had cut me, they would have been the receiving end of some cracking sarcasm. But when it came to her, I let her do it, sometimes challenging her on purpose. It came endearing and the day I smiled to myself in my office while reliving a particular argument, I knew what I was feeling now. I was falling for her.

So you can see why this is bad. A Darcy cannot possibly be in love with her. It wasn't in the plan. There was no Elizabeth Bennet in the plan.

***

The problem with Elizabeth Bennet is that she's the most carefree woman I've ever met. There's no one so reckless and who doesn't give a hoot of what people think of her, least of all, my opinion. So a few minutes after I panicked and was thinking in fury, she was sitting on the floor and eating chocolate. We are stuck for a whole night here with no one to help us and the best thing she thinks of is to eat chocolate!

She's opening her box of chocolate which she has by the way not paid yet and I'm back to staring at her(the Don't Stare campaign has been failing miserably till now)

"So, for how long is it this time?" I heard her ask as she peered in the box.

"What exactly?" I replied, not knowing what she wanted to know.

"For how long are you going to do the broody, tortured soul and come back miraculously from the Land of Thoughts," She offered me a caramel chocolate.

"How long do I usually take?" I frowned as I took the chocolate and grazed her fingers.

"Hmm... usually two to three hours. First, you sit in your corner and sulk. Then, either Charlie drags you with him or you follow him when Caroline comes after you," I saw the twinkle in her eyes at the mention of Caroline. She had just gobbled down ten pieces of chocolate. For such a tiny body, this girl can surprisingly eat a _lot._

_"_Sorry to burst it, it's going to take longer this time," I didn't even notice when I started smiling at the sight of her humming.

"Wow..." she said as she stared at me with curiosity. Was I drooling again?

"What?"

She seemed to noticed my awkwardness, waved it away and burst into a bewildered grin, "You actually can smile. To think that I believed you not humanly configured to anything other than scowling."

I couldn't help myself from laughing, "Is there some more?"

"Yeah... you also snarl sometimes. You get all Harry Potter Snape-ish then," she said, biting in her billionth chocolate.

"What?" I asked in disbelief, "I'm glad to know where I stand in the Lizzie-radar!" I can't help myself at laughing at her habit of comparing everyone to a literary figure.

"No offence meant of course Darcy!" She gushed out, "It's just the face everyone sees everytime, except when..." Elizabeth finished thoughtful.

What did she mean by that? When was the exception?

"Except when?" I probed.

She opened her mouth to reply but it seemed her thoughts catched up on her and she gulped down her words.

I grinned, "Hey don't tell me, I managed to silence The Elizabeth Bennet?" Laughter shaking me up.

"Ha ha ha, Darcy," she retorted but her eyes did not meet mine. Instead, they were avoiding mine. And what was that? A pink shade appeared on her cheekbones and travelled all the way to her lips...

She was blushing and God she looked ethereal to me!

"Elizabeth?"

"Huh?" She said abruptly as if I had awoken her.

"What's the exception? Come on, I do have a trace of humanity in me," I said dramatically.

She hesitated. I could see her pouting and biting on her lower lip while she played with the idea in her head. She did that everytime something bugged her. She finally sighed, "But don't you dare laugh at me!" She said, her face serious. What on earth could it be? She made it sound like some kind of state secret of the Roswell kind.

"Fine. I won't laugh," I replied and she relaxed slightly.

She looked at me straight in her eye, "You know how you have this prat look on your face?" I was ready to argue but her smirk dared me to challenge that one.

"How can I explain it? Most of the time, you act like a prat: you barely talk, and when you do you just say the wrong thing, you're a bit of a stuck up-" she stopped at my half amused, half suprised expression.

Is that the exception? My list of flaws? It can't be that long... But the problem is that I can't even be angry at her for insulting me anymore. This is serious but I don't care anymore. She's talking to me; not bantering, definitely not fighting, not even an underlying flirtation. She's just saying what she thinks and man that's what I like about this girl.

"Sorry, I didn't mean it to be an exposition of Darcy Flaws. You act like it. But you're not that way, aren't you?" She said and smiled. "I've seen you with Georgie and Charlie. I've seen how you are at work, at Pemberley, or with anyone you care about. You act the broody type who doesn't care in front of everyone, then transform into friendly-neighbourhood Spiderman when they need anything. It's like you turn all Dr Jekyll. I hate to admit it, but you're a nice guy, Darcy," she shrugged as she finished.

All I did was blink. I don't think I've heard my heart pounding like that. She thinks I'm a nice guy. I thought I was Darzilla to her. But no, Elizabeth Bennet thinks that I'm a nice guy. A broad grin came up on me.

"Guess the undercover nice guy side of you is reserved for me to see," she said and there was a strange light in them. If I flattered myself too much, I would think that she regretted me not being 'friendly-neighbourhood Spiderman' to her when the opposite was the case. From the moment I met her, despite all the ridiculous reasons I came up with to stay away from her, everything I did was to get closer to her. Now as I am sitting on the floor, trapped in a chocolate shop next to her smiling to me with the characteristic teasing and mirth in her form, I just _know_. Damn the plan.

I'm in love with Elizabeth Bennet.


End file.
